Creating List Using List Definition Programatically

Let’s have a look at how we can create custom list by using our own List Definition

There is <ListTemplate> element using which we can easily create our own list definition.          Andrew Connel has explained this very well in this post

But this is something different approach I wanted to use with our own list definitions

After creating List Definition I didn’t want to add List Instance to the solution because if we do so, then it creates a list with based definition automatically when feature gets activated.

I wanted to have a control over creation of this list which will be based on our custom List Definition. Which puzzled me..

Then I found a way to achieve this by using object model.. I don’t know yet If there are multiple ways to do this but this one was perfect choice for me and worked very well J

When we create a List Definition then we have a feature which provisions list definition

Note that GUID used here in code is Feature Id of the feature which provisions the list definition.

Also : please take into consideration that there are some methods in server object model available for creating a list using list templates directly , but this was something different than list templates, so this approach was preferred , because List Templates are stored into the content database while list definitions resides on actual file system of the server

try

{

  SPList list = null;

  using (SPSite site = new SPSite("http://yoursite/"))

  {

     using (SPWeb web = site.RootWeb)

     {

      //List Will be Created Based on this ListDefinition

- OOB Custom List Definition

      //00BFEA71-DE22-43B2-A848-C05709900100

        foreach (SPList _list in web.Lists)

        {

          if (_list.Title.Equals("TestList"))

          {

              list = _list;

          }

        }

        if (list == null)

        {

         web.AllowUnsafeUpdates = true;

         Guid listID = web.Lists.Add("TestList", //List Title

                      "This is Test List",      //List Description

                      "Lists/TestList",         //List Url

                      "00BFEA71-DE22-43B2-A848-C05709900100", //Feature Id of List definition Provisioning Feature – CustomList Feature Id

                      100,                     //List Template Type

                     "101");      //Document Template Type .. 101 is for None

           web.Update();

           web.AllowUnsafeUpdates = false;

                           

         }

        }

     }

    }

    catch (Exception ex)

    {

      

    }

this is the way to do this and works fine :)
I hope some one finds this useful..